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RECAPLET: The Walking Dead S5E04, “Slabtown”

Okay, kids, honesty moment here: I shoulda been proactive and gotten this written on Sunday or Monday, because I’ve been in Nashville all week at a teacher conference. It’s currently close to 10 PM on Friday night and I’ve been chasing barbecue all evening and I’m sort of ready to collapse, so if this is sliiiiiightly more abbreviated than usual, I’m terribly sorry. I swear. I’ll do better next week.

Plus this episode kinda sucked.

PREVIOUSLY ON “THE WALKING DEAD”:Beth went missing a long time ago, so long ago that her sister forgot she existed and ponced off to Washington, D.C. with her common-law husband, an idiot, another idiot, a third idiot, and Rosita. Bob got partially eaten and totally dead. Rick kept his promises, and Gareth and company got the crap killed out of them. And more dialogue than the entire collected works of Shakespeare, translated into German.

TL;DR VERSION OF THIS POST: Worst episode of Scrubs ever.

We start with eyeballs, as Beth awakens in what looks exactly like a pre-apocalypse, perfectly normal hospital. She’s got a cut on her face that wasn’t there before and her wrist is all wrapped up. She does some panicky stuff and then Dr. Cox and the Janitor walk in, only the Janitor is a woman dressed like a cop. They explain to her that some of their people, who apparently just wander around looking for trouble, found her unconscious and surrounded by walkers, which… yeah, this already obviously not true to everyone. She asks about Daryl and they tell her she was alone.

“If we hadn’t pulled you out of there, you’d be one of them,” the Janitor says. “So you owe us.”

…

…y’know, I’m gonna cut this one short here. I thought last season was the best in the show’s history and so far this season has not come close to being as good as last season was. I was gonna recap this traditional-style only with a lot of Scrubs jokes (the kid she escapes with was gonna be Turk, and I was gonna start calling Beth “Elliott” after a while) except that man, it’s just not worth it.

Here’s what this episode does right:

I kinda like Dr. Whatshisname, the dude I was calling Dr. Cox and probably ought to have called Dorian except then there wouldn’t be a Dr. Cox.

Anything involving Junior Kimbrough cameos is all good.

The entire escape sequence, from Beth getting the rapist cop eaten to the excellently creepy descent into the elevator shaft to the somewhat unrealistic if fantastically shot “Beth turns into Armageddon badass” sequence, was great. The elevator shaft in particular was the creepiest moment in a season that has been, for its faults, really high on creepy moments.

Keshia Castle-Hughes is in it. She dies quickly, though, which seems unfair. She’s too good of an actress to waste like that.

That said, watching them take her arm off with what appears to be a length of wire is another one of those excellently creepy moments.

The entire hospital setup makes no sense at all. No part of it, from the cop-lady’s attitude to her random Beth-slap early in the episode to everyone’s willingness to put up with Obvious Rapist Cop, is just as dumb as can be. I can imagine this happening in some sort of larger society but this place seriously appears to be just one floor of a hospital.

I really don’t see how these guys are managing to make long supply/stealing blondes runs when their hospital is in the middle of Atlanta. Atlanta is screwed, and none of them really appear to be too terribly smart.

Things get interesting at the very end, when Beth is about to kill somebody and then Carol gets wheeled in, unconscious. We still don’t know who Daryl had with him– good money is on either Morgan or Noah/Turk from this episode, but I don’t see him abandoning both Beth and Carol to head back to the church with either of those guys. So that’ll be interesting to find out about.

NEXT WEEK ON “THE WALKING DEAD”: My mood does not improve any, as the show decides to follow Glenn, Maggie, Rosita and the Dumbasses Three to see what stupid things they decide to do. Pleasepleaseplease let Eugene die. Badly.

I have been REALLY surprised with the lack of reaction from her. The only time they’ve even hinted at her mentioning Beth was the voice-over in the train at the beginning of the first episode when everyone was sharpening weapons. Not a syllable since then. That’s not Maggie.

I really want this season to get better. Figures that I’d start officially reviewing it and everything would get stupid again. 🙂

So, here’s where our paths intersect again, it seems. I spoke prematurely over the weekend when I said I was back. That flu turned into pneumonia, so I’ve been too foggy to even read for the past couple of days. Still sick but more alert now, and have managed to get caught up on this season, which means I can discuss these reviews, So yay!

My thought on this episode was that it was a bloody, but mightily entertaining, waste of screen time. Right up to the moment they wheeled Carol in. Given the way things have gone so far, I just assumed she was only pretending to be unconscious and that she and Darryl are infiltrating the hospital because Beth was taken by someone in one of those vehicles with the white cross. I figured the next time we see the hospital, it’ll be a flashback that shows what happened to D. and Carol while they were gone.

Couldn’t agree more about the dumbassess three. This week, I was just wanting to be watching some other apocalypse survivors. And there’s a reason I don’t answer to Eugene, lol.